Guangdong to strengthen cooperation with Gulf Cooperation Council members

Guangdong province in South China will actively participate in the cooperation between China and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries and strive to make greater contributions to deepen the strategic partnership between one another, a senior official said on Sunday.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China, said he hopes GCC member countries could seize the opportunities of jointly constructing "Belt and Road Initiative" to further strengthen economic and trade cooperation with the country and steadily expand the import and export scale of energy resources and consumer products to better benefit the people of both sides.

Huang, also Party chief of Guangdong province, also welcome GCC member countries to join hands to construct the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and encourage more enterprises and institutions to settle down in Guangdong to share the development achievements of the country's reform and opening up.

Huang made his remarks at his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the China-GCC Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum which took place in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, on Sunday.

Guangdong, a major global production base, has already established very close relation with GCC member countries.

And Wang Wentao, Minister of Commerce, said China is now comprehensively promoting the development of Chinese modernization with high quality development, expanding high level opening up and providing new opportunities for all countries in the world, including GCC member countries.

In addition to extending the oil and gas cooperation industry chain and unleashing the potential for cooperation in the clean energy field, China is expecting to further expand trade scale, enrich trade categories and develop digital trade with GCC member countries, he said.

China-GCC Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum has played an important role to consolidate economic ties between China and GCC member countries, according to organizers.

Meanwhile the event establishes a platform and provides a renewed impetus to the cooperation expansion between China and GCC member countries, organizers.

More than 400 senior government officials and representatives from enterprises, business associations, financial institutions and think tanks, scholars and experts, as well as media outlets attended the event which was jointly hosted by the Ministry of Commerce and Guangdong provincial government.